


Quintet

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Batcave, Fluff, M/M, Men of Letters Headquarters, Post Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>based loosely around the 'five times' structure, but not really. fluffy as hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quintet

“An alien?”

Dean looks at him, curious; tips his head to one side much like Castiel usually does. He’s considering him, as he has often these past few weeks. He looks him up and down. “Nah. More like… a _tourist.”_ He flips through the racks of clothes in front of them one last time, then shrugs as if giving them up for lost. “C’mon. We’ll get you some ray bans. Maybe a Hawaiian shirt.”

But they go for neither of these items, and instead Castiel finds himself awash in a deluge of fabrics and colours, hands tripping over the rails of things so pretty he could almost eat them; the world a swirl of colours, of shapes, and of Dean, its muddy-coloured accent, mocking in bluejeans and his old, battered leather jacket. He’s a leather-strip bracelet, something old and sentimental, nothing like the things he wants Castiel to choose – but Castiel has _been_ old, has been used, and has been useful.

Privately, he thinks, he is somewhat ready to be treated as _new._

With newness, of course, come new clothes; Dean elbows him, drawing him from his reverie. “How about this?” he lifts a shirt in his arms – light-blue, soft pastel, something Dean himself, or perhaps his brother, might wear – but Castiel has ideas of what he should be, now.

He wants to dress in pink and russet and gold; shameless greens, frantic auburn. He wants to press the patterns, the overwhelming colours of this world he’s been new-born into, all over himself. He fingers the clothes, twiddling the zipper of a lurid yellow jacket affectionately.

“Do you think?” he muses, only half listening, already fixated by something else; a pair of jeans in deep, illustrious purple, the colour so thick as to be almost wet; the colour of plants, of huge, African flowers. “I like these.”

Dean chokes a laugh – Castiel accepts the laugh, with dignity. His resolve remains untainted by embarrassment. “You sure?” he says, gently, and Castiel feels a rush of affection towards him, another sensation that is becoming increasingly familiar. “Might stand out a little.”

Castiel rubs the fabric between finger and thumb. “That’s alright.”

Eventually they leave the bustling Saturday crowd of the Mall with armfuls of clothes, most of which Castiel chose, some which Dean pushed at him. T-shirts in noxious orange, acid-yellow; the purple jeans. Loudly patterned long-sleeved shirts, orange and purple and blue and bright pink, festooned with glass-clear buttons (or white, or black, or gold). He takes bundles of socks, and though Dean insists on some more ‘sober’ items – a pair in faded blue, some in black and grey – the kinds Castiel chooses are busy with zig-zags, vibrant with polka-dots in colours he delights in reeling off in his head. He has turquoise underwear, bright pink socks threaded through with gold. Boxers with cartoon characters on them, the choice of which was unbelievable, and few of which he recognized. He chooses Bugs Bunny, Road Runner. He avoids telling Dean how, to his mind, Daffy Duck and he resemble one another.

He does not miss the cheerful flush of Dean’s skin, when he steps from the changing-room cubicles; how his eyes skip across Castiel’s now-human body, how his hands are troubled in finding a place to rest. Castiel chooses the clothes, revels in choosing them, in them being _his._ He gets less-than-sensible shoes; boots which resemble those in movies Dean forced him to watch, pointed toes and heels that click against the ground as they walk back to the car together.

But his favourite; his most treasured item from the whole trip, the heart of his _newness,_ his tremulous joy; is the piece Dean laughed the most about; the pair of black, wire-rimmed aviator  sunglasses which Dean had plucked from a shelf and placed over his nose.

Dean had looked at him, and the smile had briefly quavered on his lips; his laughter half died, before it resurfaced. He’d taken Castiel by the shoulders, and smirked at him appraisingly, though his eyes grew slightly wary, slightly _afraid._ He’d said, “You look like a fucking dork.” (Castiel is learning doublespeak well, thanks to Dean’s constant teachings) – and picked up a pair for himself, as well, so they matched.

On the road, driving back to the headquarters, new clothes rasping, strange, against his shoulders and hips, Castiel fixes his eyes on the road, vision sepia-toned behind his new glasses. He looks at Dean, and Dean looks hesitantly back, and he swallows.

“You happy with everything?” he asks, and Castiel feels laughter bubbling in his gut.

“Very much.”

\---

Dean and Sam, he learns very quickly, have had bred into them an appreciation for the simpler things in life.

So when the two of them, practically _glowing_ with joy, shout him over to show him yet another ‘secret’ room they’ve found in the headquarters, Castiel expects a larder; a basketball court, perhaps. What he does _not_ expect, is a bath.

“It’s fucking amazing, right?”

Castiel wanders over to the wide, porcelain vessel. It’s almost too big to be called a bath; the thing, he thinks with guilt-ridden lecherousness, would fit two with ease; he glances at Dean, wary that somehow he might have become a mind-reader in the last few hours. “It’s – impressive.” He admits, and traces the edge of it with his palm. The surface is cool beneath his hand.

Since falling, something new to him is fantasy, and lowering himself into the tub that night – at Dean and Sam’s insistence, no less, the two of him so _eager_ for him to enjoy himself, to shake off the occasional melancholy that consumes him – he is plagued by it.

It would be so easy, so _easy_ now, to pull Dean into his arms at some point in the ensuing days. They’re taking an impromptu vacation, learning each other again, the three of them, and he knows dimly that the brothers are ‘sussing him out’ – responding to the new dynamic of three, rather than two. Ascertaining whether this ‘thing’ will work at all; and Castiel is certain ( _half_ certain) that the possibility of romance; of sex; is furthest from their minds.

For Castiel, it is not.

He runs the bath after he gets into it, relishing the feeling of warm water on his toes; the way it bleeds from cold to warm, the liquid rattling through the plumbing, up to him from beneath the ground. Human ingenuity has always fascinated him, and though he’s not entirely certain that baths are sanitary, he respects the tradition, the implications of _relaxing._ Naked, he finds himself unusual, but not alien; it’s odd for him to see such an unbulky shape when he looks down; removed, the layers and layers of shirts, ties and overcoats, replaced by the clothes he chose himself. In a way, he feels more ‘himself’ with his clothes on, than naked; the clothes, he _chose._ This body is still Jimmy’s, however long its ‘true’ occupant has been absent.

But it is hard not to lower himself onto the cold porcelain and think of Dean. How easily he’d fit here, beside Castiel; between his legs, Castiel’s knees rising on either side. He thinks somehow it would feel _right_ to them, righter even than travelling together, to be naked alongside one another; and the fact that Dean is _beautiful,_ warm roiling lines, slow curves that easily amble, has not gone unnoticed by him.

As an angel, Castiel could sense things that humans could (at least consciously) not; pheromones. The scents of sex and anger, sweat and love. But as one of them, now, the ability is no longer his. He has to guess the way that people are feeling, the way that he feels, himself; and he doesn’t know if Dean’s attraction to him is conscious; if it exists, still, at all. He doesn’t know if Dean desired his power, his grace, or simply the body beneath it; he doesn’t know if Dean, in his very definite _wanting,_ wanted _Castiel,_ the parcel of bones and blood and flesh he is now; the man.

He knows little, as a human, beyond _fact,_ and emotional complexity continues to somehow elude him, though he feels as deeply and as sharply as anyone else. He knows he _wants_ Dean, but doesn’t know if that feeling is reciprocated; he knows he can wrap his fist around himself now, and close his eyes, lids fluttering, and think of him; his warm skin, his _blinding_ soul. He can bring himself to climax just thinking of him, Dean in essence, Dean in _being;_ not only Castiel’s charge but now his friend, a status he never expected to reach with anyone, let alone the fabled _righteous man,_ however loosely the title fits him, now; destiny unattained.  

He comes with a quiet gasp, the noise echoing across the bathroom, and he hopes no one is poised outside the door, to hear; but part of him doesn’t really care, either; he hopes Dean knows what he feels for him, what coils, warm, at the foot of his ribs.

He unplugs the bath and sits in the still-warm water as it sluices off and away from him; as it swirls down the drain. For a moment he debates just staying there forever in the warm, muggy musk that clings to the tiles, condensation coating him, in turn, as it coats them.

But he pulls himself out of the tub instead; he stands on the floor, shivering, and finds a towel. Pads back to his room with it wrapped around his waist, fingering his hair with one hand, water dripping down his wrist.

He can be alone, now that he is human, and thus, he can keep secrets. He alone knows how the water feels on his flesh; how it feels, for him, to be warm. To feel safe. To have Dean Winchester look at him with fogged, sloe-dark eyes as he crosses the hallway to his room, inclines his head with a smile, and shuts the door behind him.

\---

The two of him tease him about his sleeping habits. Castiel, almost catlike, can drop out of consciousness on any surface; he slumps on the couch; he leans on the counters, and snoozes. Once, Dean found him simply standing, snoring, in the middle of the library, a thing he hasn’t stopped chuckling about since.

He has found, however, that though he’s _able_ to fall asleep anywhere, Castiel has his favourite spaces. He likes the edge of the couch, head pillowed in his hand; he likes his blankets like a roof above his head, himself curled and foetal in the centre of them, knees pulled to his chin.

The third favourite, he discovered accidentally.

The brothers tug at him most days, and they forget his unfathomable age; Sam and Dean are insistent on showing him things, teaching him things, and though Sam’s emphasis is gentler – more likely to see his interests and expand on them, than try to inspire new ones, as Dean does – in all honesty, they tire him out. Dean likes loud music, frenetic action; likes to stand at Castiel’s ear whilst teaching him things, explaining things, and the way it makes Castiel tremble, _react,_ is exhausting in and of itself.  

So movies are a welcome reprieve; a way for him to sit, comfortably flanked by the Winchesters, and perhaps doze a little. He had assumed, initially, that the purpose of watching movies was the visual experience; but now he finds himself identifying more with the sensation, and he can no longer count on one hand the number of times he and Dean have settled into a movie marathon – _Indiana Jones, Star Wars –_ and ended up curled in a heap on the couch, the TV blaring to the notice of no-one.

That, by far, is Castiel’s favourite way to sleep; nestled against the side of another warm body, their heartbeat keeping time with his; it’s a novelty. He has fallen asleep against Sam, and enjoyed it immensely; but with Dean it is different, it carries more weight, and once he woke to Dean absently playing with the tips of his fingers, and was touched and humbled by the gesture. The evening ended in Dean quietly shifting Castiel from his lap; but the next day they revolved around one another more carefully, their touches different, and Castiel – for all that his desires are probably clouding his vision – feels, somehow, that all these little things are culminating into something bigger; something that’s been on the horizon for a long, long while.

He stretches languidly on the couch, now, most nights, and Dean will join him; sometimes sitting far from him as he can; sometimes sitting inches away, and even carding a hand through Castiel’s hair. Their relationship, as always, is five steps forward, four steps back; they fight, they disagree; sometimes Castiel neither understands nor _wants_ to understand his friend; but they are coalescing, two liquids in a jar slowly mixing together, their colours blending.

He looks up, eyes half-lidded, sleepy, at Dean’s face fixed on the television. Dean’s gaze slips to him; slides against his own. Something warm and heavy – more than lust, more than desire – probes its way down Castiel’s gullet, and settles low in his chest.

\----

Three weeks after his arrival at the bunker – an unnecessarily melodramatic saga which Castiel prefers not to think about, his dreams wreathed in smoke and blood – Sam pulls him aside, yet another lesson in mind; this one, a little less solid than scrambled eggs, or toast.

Sam sidles up next to him when he’s washing the dishes. He picks up a plate from the drainer and starts drying it in silence, at first – and then he clears his throat.

“Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?” Castiel has some inkling of what he’ll say, though he doesn’t know entirely what has prompted it.

“You don’t need the birds and bees talk, right?” Sam asks him, sounding at once horrified at the prospect and resignedly willing to carry out the task, if needs be. Castiel huffs a laugh into the sink, hands plunged beneath the warm water. Suds scatter into the air from his breath.

“No, Sam. I’m fine.”

“Can we talk about –“ Sam puts down the now-dry plate, and takes another, rubbing it in concentric circles with a dishcloth. “Relationships?”

Castiel tilts a glance at him, drawing his eyes from the sink. Their eyes meet, but it is careful. “Is this about Dean?”

“Depends.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

Sam sighs heavily, and stacks the plate with the other dry one. He takes another. “I’m just trying to work out what you – _want.”_

Castiel shrugs, baffled by the question. “I would think that was fairly obvious.”

“Not to me. Or to him, I’m guessing.”

Castiel frowns. He plunges his hands deep within the water, tracing the bottom of the sink for cutlery that has evaded him. “I’m not sure, if I’m perfectly honest. This is – new to me.” He pauses. “And, of course, it depends what _he_ wants from _me.”_

“He’s dumb.” Sam says, and then laughs at Castiel’s befuddled expression. “I mean – he wants pretty much everything you’ve got to give, I’m pretty sure. No matter what he says.” He pauses, and his tone gets more sombre. “But if he loses you again-“ He swallows. “Look, I’m just saying, you guys don’t have the best track record for keepin’ it together.”

“True.” Castiel brings his hands out of the water, and is clutching various knives and forks within them. He sets them on the counter, and begins to wash them, one by one, before placing them on the drainer. “I understand if you’re – hesitant.”

“Worried.” Sam corrects him, but pauses, after. “Glad, though. You know that, right?”

“I do now.” Castiel smiles at him gratefully. He frowns, moments later. “Honestly, Sam, I think this is – new to us. For him, having someone as a …friend for so long.” He places another butter-knife on the drainage board. “For me, well – everything.” He laughs, because it is ridiculous. “I don’t know how this will go.” He pauses. “I know I’d like to find out.”

“I’m just saying, _romantically,_ our family’s uh –“ Sam’s voice drops a decibel. “We’re not very lucky. We tend to end up – disappointed.”

Castiel knows acutely that Sam is speaking not only of his mother, his father and his brother, but also of himself. He understands Sam a little more than his brother; Sam knows how it feels to want, how it feels to fall, in a way. He knows what it is to have the best intentions, and to be bloodied by them. “I can’t promise that won’t happen.”

“I know. I know. And I want – and want Dean to know what –“ he laughs. “I mean, no pressure or anything, but you love him. I want him to know what that feels like.”

“He’ll know.”

“I know.” Sam sighs heavily. The drainage board is running out of plates, of things to dry; he frets the dishcloth across a fork, the movement more nervous, time-wasting, than practical. “Basically, I think I just wanted to tell you to be careful with him. I know he’s a big boy, he can look after himself, but I think you could break him.” Sam shrugs, eyes fixed on his hands. “I don’t want that to happen.” He pauses. “And I don’t wanna lose you, either.” He says, slightly more shame-faced to be talking about himself. “I haven’t got many friends, you know? S’nice.”

“Likewise.” Castiel is getting better at this; reassuring smiles, making eye contact with _meaning._ He lifts his hand up and puts it on Sam’s shoulder; squeezes it, lightly. “It will be fine, Sam.” He says, and means it – and then hesitates. “Or it won’t. But either way, I’m not going to leave.”

Sam seems very young when he speaks next, and the words touch him emphatically. “You promise?”

“Yes.” And he _can_ promise it, now. Human, with no obligation to heaven, no obligation to these boys. They are no longer his charges; they’re his _friends,_ and thus, now, he can make _sure_ nothing comes before them. The realisation makes all the muscles in his body relax. He catches Sam’s eye. “Is this you giving me your blessing?”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, sure. Carry him over the threshold, adopt some kids. Anything you want.” He looks at Castiel, then, mock-serious. “Just, uh – don’t wake me up.” There’s a warning tone in his voice, but it’s playful; and behind it, reads, _don’t leave me out._

Castiel isn’t worried about that, though – he knows he’ll be second to Sam, always, and it doesn’t irk him. Dean is _his_ first – has been, for a long time – and that, in his estimation, is more than adequate to be getting on with.

\----

With Sam’s strange, careful blessing, Castiel starts to feel bolder.

He still doesn’t know if it’s right – if what he’s trying to instigate will be good for them, or the undoing of them both – but suddenly, it is almost all he wants.

He consciously starts to invade Dean’s space. Crowds him against the sink, ostensibly in search of cutlery; stands behind him when he watches television; eyes him, unabashed, when he returns from a shower. He holds pointed, sustained eye-contact with Dean when they speak, and the way Dean chokes, flushing, when Castiel insinuates a foot between his legs at the breakfast-table makes Sam snort into his cereal.

At the shooting range, Castiel employs devious tactics to get Dean to slot up behind him, chest-to-back, crotch-to-backside, breathing just a little faster than usual in his ear. There is no longer much room for pretending these are things friends do, things comrades-in-arms do to each other; Castiel, tactician to the end, starts engineering the moment. He hangs in Dean’s doorway, talking softly to him, every night before bed. He touches him, gently, and often; holds his wrist, fits his palm to the side of his face as they speak. Once, during a movie, he yawns, stretching, and folds his arm over Dean’s shoulders – but Sam starts laughing so hard that he has to get a glass of water, and the moment is thereafter ruined.

It is torture, doing these things to no avail, and Castiel finds himself in the unique position of identifying completely with characters on television; he feels, whilst not _lovelorn,_ frustrated – he is doing all the right things, saying all the right words; the tension between them ratchets higher every day, to such an extent that Castiel isn’t sure if they’ll _kill_ each other, when it finally dissipates.

And yet, it continues on.

Eventually he ends up on the couch again, with Dean’s head in his lap, his hands in his hair. It’s steady, intimate, and though Castiel would usually see it as an opportunity, he is exhausted. He’s not one to give up on things – far from it – but in that moment he is content to simply enjoy the moment, rather than try to turn it into something else.

So it is, of course, that moment that Dean looks up at him, and says, “Hey, Cas?”

He looks down, brows raised. “Mmm?”

“C’mere.”

And Castiel does, lowering his head even as Dean raises his; and naturally, like liquid, like rain falling, he catches Dean’s mouth, upside-down, with his own.

They pull back. They look at one another. Dean coughs, gently. “Does this change anything?” he asks, careful and hesitant, and Castiel can’t help it; he laughs. Shrugs.

What a question, to think of change, when in the last two months Castiel has become human; when, in the last two months, he has fallen in love. He smiles at Dean, and feels a rush of adoration thrum through every one of his veins, a sharp-angled flush through his entire body; another thing he supposes he’ll have to try to get used to.

“I suppose so.” He says gently, and for a moment Dean looks disappointed – but he pulls himself up to sit, and he faces Castiel, and puts his hands on Castiel's waist; Castiel reciprocates, thrilled to be able.

“D’you care?”

Castiel laughs, again. He pulls Dean closer, hands sliding over his back, their bodies flush together, _right_ , so much better and so much more underwhelming than he expected. He thinks of what comes from this point on; the trouble and the sacrifice. The _joy._

He grins. “Not at all.”


End file.
